Blood Diamonds Essays - Sierra Leone Civil War, Blood Diamonds

Imagine you are walking through Sierra Leone, a beautiful, lush landscape surrounded by tall trees in the summer sun. Sierra Leone is a small country located on the northwest side of Africa?s coast that encompasses approximately 45,000 square miles of mountainous terrain, about 7% of which is arable (Affairs 2010). The country has a mixture of verdant rain forests, beautiful beaches, and more than six million people living within its borders. Then imagine yourself walking around a bend, discovering a large center of slaves working on their hands and knees in muddy riverbeds in search for diamonds. In addition to the diverse foliage, Sierra Leone is also home to deposits of diamonds, titanium ore, bauxite, iron ore, gold, and chromite (Affairs 2010). For Sierra Leoneans, these resources, diamond deposits in particular, have been a curse for they have been the basis for much conflict and war. Because of their small size, diamonds can, with little effort be transported or smuggled out o f the country and sold into the black market. There are two types of diamonds in Sierra Leone: alluvial diamonds, which are found in shallow riverbeds and kimberlite diamonds, which are found in concentrated mines. Because diamonds can be smuggled out of the country so easily for such high profit, they have become both a reason to fight and a factor in creating revenue in order to purchase firearms and other provisions. One group who came to power as a result of their control over blood diamonds was the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Because Sierra Leone has such a weak property rights regime over diamonds, rebels from the RUF seized full control of the diamond deposits away from the government. This seizure boiled over into a decade long war between the RUF to determine who controls the property rights to the diamond deposits. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the overall role of blood diamonds in Sierra Leone. I will first present a brief background on diamonds that will transition into the role of diamonds in initiating, exacerbating, and eventually ending the war in Sierra Leone. Finally, I will end this analysis with a discussion of the post-war challenges Sierra Leone faces in developing as a peaceful, unified country. Despite having some of the most beautiful scenery in West Africa, Sierra Leone has often been described as one of the most economically poor countries in the world. Since the discovery of diamonds in Sierra Leone in 1932, the country has managed to export over 32 million carats of diamonds (Hirsch 2000). Prior to the conflict with the RUF, the diamond industry was comprised of several corporate mining companies. In addition to these diamond companies, Sierra Leone also used what is called the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme (ADMS). Through this, small diamond producers were granted licenses that enabled them to mine for diamonds, typically using labor-intensive mining techniques (Hirsch 2000). The most common method for diamond mining in Sierra Leone is the sifting through gravel from river banks, river bets, and small pits (Conflict Free 2009). Unfortunately, the majority of workers in this type of work have no ownership over the diamonds they are unearthing. Because the diamonds mined through the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme are ultimately sold through chains of small dealers to one of the corporate mining companies to be exported, the ADMS s eems to have only two main purposes: ?to appease traditional rulers in the Eastern province and to obtain diamonds through labor-intensive, non-capitalist labor that could not be obtained profitably by the larger corporations (Zack-Williams, 206).? The corporate structure behind the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme is dominated by a company named DeBeers. Through Lauren Thompson?s report Sierra Leone: 1935-2000, she explains how ?in 1935, DeBeers gained full rights to the diamond industry in Sierra Leone until the year 2034 (Thompson 2000).? Later in her report, Thompson discusses the role of Lebanese traders in Sierra Leone and their attitudes towards diamond smuggling. ?These traders quickly discovered smuggling diamonds brought easy profits, and illicit mining and trading grew throughout the country (Thompson 2000).? As soon as word spread concerning diamond smuggling, thousands of people flocked to Sierra Leone creating an overwhelming diamond rush in 1950. Because of the